Christi Johnstone ~ Sentimental Silver Personalized Jewelry

Valentine’s Day always seems to sneak up quickly after Christmas.    I’ve put together some of my favorite Valentine’s Day gift suggestions.  Gifts for your sweetheart, gifts for your mom and gifts for yourself!   Many of our products, including our Heart Line, are perfect for Valentine’s Day.   Here are a few of my other top picks…

Valentine's Day Jewelry Gift Guide

I often find that people aren’t sure which birthstones match up with which months of the year, so I thought I’d share a little of that information.

The stones that I use in necklaces match up with the following birthstones…

Sentimental Silver Birthstone Color Chart

Sentimental Silver uses Austrian made cubic zirconias, lab created gemstones and simulated gemstones (they vary based on color) in our pieces. Our stones range in size from 2.5mm-3mm and are available in all birthstone colors. We do not use natural gemstones stones, as most natural stones cannot hold up to the heat of the kiln firing, many will either discolor, crack or even disintegrate from the heat.

I embed each stone by hand directly into the silver while it is in a soft clay like state (which is later hardened through firing at high heat in our kilns).    When the pieces are kiln fired, the silver shrinks slightly, permanently holding the stones in place within the silver. I would never consider gluing a stone to a piece, as I have seen done by others.

I always tell customers that they are not limited to their specific birthstone color.  Feel free to use what YOU like!   I do many necklaces using light pink and light blue for girls and boys.    There are no rules – your piece is a custom one of a kind creation, so make it exactly what you want it to be!

Please keep in mind that stone color may vary based on individual computer monitors.

I hope that everyone had a great holiday and that the new year is off to a fabulous start.

After wrapping up all of the holiday orders, I immediately moved on to holiday baking – something I do a crazy amount of each year.    It’s pretty much a given that if I’m coming to your house for the holiday’s, that I’ll be bringing dessert.   I don’t keep track, but I usually make at least six or more types of cookies, a few types of bars and brownies, fudge, peppermint bark, white and dark chocolate covered pretzels (a ridiculous amount of those) white and dark chocolate covered peanut butter balls, chocolate haystacks, muffins, breads and a partridge in a pear tree.  Okay, maybe not the last one, but it certainly feels like it.

After that it was finally time to relax and enjoy Christmas.  We were able to spend a lot of quality time with family and friends, as well as just the three of us at home.   Rick usually has some unused vacation time, and he burns it up at the end of the year.   We had a great Christmas, and Bella loved her American Girl Doll and her Zhu Zhu Pets (though honestly, I think I spent more time finding those Zhu Zhu pets than she will spend playing with them – I’m just thankful I only paid retail and didn’t pay the Ebay rates!).

Christmas Morning

The Zhu Zhu Pets. And their ball which I thought Santa would never find...

The stocking is always a favorite.

Chrissa. We've entered the world of American Girl Dolls.

We also attended a really special dinner for my Grandparent’s 50th wedding anniversary, which was great – and allowed us to visit with more family that we simply do not manage to see enough of.

50th Anniversary Dinner

We even managed to get a few projects done around the house.   One of them was moving Bella into the slightly bigger bedroom in our house.   We’ve talked about doing it for years, but were never quite motivated enough to actually get started on it.   This Christmas, my Father gave Bella a beautiful antique four poster bed – gorgeous – and LARGE.   This pretty much gave us no choice but to make the move.   So over a few long days we took everything out of the extra bedroom (and that everything spent some quality time cluttering up my hallway, bedroom, living room, and any other spot we could find), primed it, painted it, moved all of Bella’s furniture, toys and in, decorated it, and moved everything from the extra bedroom into her old bedroom.   It was a lot of work, but we are SO thrilled with the result.   It’s amazing how much difference a few extra feet of floor space makes.

Painting her room

Yay! It's done. Bright, colorful and totally Bella.

The pink Christmas tree will stay put through Valentine's Day.

Look - room to play!

Super happy with her new room!

Because I’ve had a few friends ask – a number of the items in the room came from Target.   While my Dad gave her the beautiful bed, my mom gave her the gorgeous rainbow bedding that totally pulls together all the colors in the room.

The funky colored bright rugs are from Target (and quite soft)…

The cube organizer for her toys (and the colorful bins in it) are Target finds as well…

So happy it turned out well, and that she’s happy with it.  The bed, being an antique, is not a perfect full size.  I guess that’s pretty typical with antique beds.  And it’s HIGH off the ground.  So high I was able to put her former train table drawers under it for storage.   She has a stool to help her get up (though she prefers to leap of course) and she loves being up so high.  Makes mom a bit nervous, but as mom, everything makes me a bit nervous!

Now it’s time to get back to school and work.  I have lots of new things coming up at Sentimental Silver, some great ways to reward my wonderful customers as well as some cool new ideas and pieces.   Stay tuned, I hope to have them up and rolling very soon!